Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Just last week I was presenting the potential benefits to Tasmanian primary producers in the industrial hemp and medicinal cannabis industries to the National Farmers Federation national conference in Launceston, where I live, for their Regionalisation Agenda 2030. It was ironic that one of the things we discussed was that the last time we saw the Narcotics Drugs Act amended was to allow Australian growers to export medicinal cannabis products to the world, particularly to the Canadian market and, of course, to the US market in California. Yet, while the primary production minister, Mr David Littleproud, was bragging that Australian farmers and companies are now the fourth-biggest exporters of cannabis products to the world—and we could potentially be the biggest, according to the minister—he won't let those companies and primary producers sell their products to Australian consumers, except under the extremely strict conditions which my colleague Senator Siewert has already gone into today. It's ironic. If we have a moral issue or an ideological issue with making cannabis products available to medical patients, why would we be bragging about the job that Australian farmers and companies are doing in terms of their export numbers without actually thinking, 'Well, shouldn't we be making those products more easily available to Australians who are suffering and who need them?' Senator Siewert also mentioned how expensive these products are. It makes perfect sense that, if we have that production diverted to local sources, of course we're going to have more supply, and it's going to make those products more accessible and cheaper for Australians who need to use them.

I also pointed out to the Tasmanian producers—I've been in trouble for talking about this before—that Tasmania is the poppy state. Not only have Tasmanian farmers made a lot of money over many years by growing poppies and exporting them to the world, but Australian companies like Tas Alkaloids were actually the companies that invented painkillers like OxyContin. That was synthesised and invented in Tasmania and exported to the world. That particular drug and others of that family have recently been involved in massive US court cases—some of the biggest-liability court cases in US history, with hundreds of billions of dollars of damages being sought from pharmaceutical companies for selling and distributing OxyContin, because it is so highly addictive. It's one of the most addictive narcotics that a human being can take, yet it's legal. I don't blame Tasmanian farmers for growing poppies, but I know many of them are struggling with the moral dilemmas of the product that they've been making, which was invented and synthesised in Tasmania and has been linked to this plague of death and addiction in the US.

Just from a risk diversification point of view, I was encouraging Tasmanian farmers to look at industrial hemp and its many applications, as well as the medicinal cannabis market. But they're restricted to exporting it. They can't make it at the moment for local consumption. So I think that's a really important point.

I was joined in my presentation by Tim Schmidt, who's the head of the Tasmanian Hemp Association and also on the national board of hemp. Tim's group advocates for industrial hemp. Industrial hemp can be used to make medicinal cannabis products; there is an industrial process for that. While his organisation doesn't, strictly, advocate for medicinal cannabis in terms of other species of cannabis, he recognised the profitability for farmers. Of course, in talking to farmers, you've got to talk to them about why this crop could make them money compared to what else they're using in their paddocks. Tim said that, in the market for good-quality industrial hemp that's being used for medicinal cannabis in Canada, farmers are receiving up to US$12,000 a tonne for their product that's being sold into those medicinal markets. That's for hemp; cannabis products can actually yield even more. The figures that Tim talked to Tassie farmers about were up to $20,000 per hectare for growing good, high-quality cannabis for the medicinal market. So it's a win-win for farmers if they can see that this is sustainable for them and it's worth it for them to do this, and it's a win-win for Australians who need to access these products. Why not access locally sourced products rather than importing products from overseas?

Senator Siewert also mentioned that the illicit market just for medicinal cannabis products is around 600,000 Australians. It's estimated that only four per cent of those are receiving those products via prescriptions. This bill goes into some details about why there are so many restrictions on Australians accessing medicinal cannabis or CBD products. I know that in Tasmania it's been nearly impossible. I've been trying to get some people onto trials in Tasmania, and it's been nearly impossible to do that. Some of them have had to source their prescriptions from Victoria and other places.

So I asked myself: why is it so difficult for a product that we know works and that is a good alternative for other dangerous narcotics that are legal, like opioids? It's the mentality, the ideology, around it. We go back to the 1930s and the days of Reefer Madnessarguably one of the worst films ever made—which tied in with the prohibition on marijuana in the 1930s. It almost destroyed the hemp industry, let alone cannabis for medical purposes—and it's still alive and well.

In 2012, I was asking FSANZ in estimates why Tasmanian farmers and Australian farmers couldn't grow industrial hemp for food? Hemp is one of the highest sources of omega-3. It's a really profitable and good product for farmers to be growing. I couldn't get a straight answer out of FSANZ. But, as it turned out later, the police had issues with farmers growing industrial hemp, because they didn't believe that they could control it and that there were risks with the illicit narcotics market being associated with that. One of the things that the police had apparently raised—as we saw later—was that people might hide illegal cannabis crops inside industrial hemp. It's ironic that, when I raised this with Tim, he said, 'Well, actually, it's a joke, because the plants will cross-pollinate each other.'

After I visited Tim's industrial hemp crop, I then went to visit a local sawmiller in Meander, Deloraine. He said, 'Where have you been today?' and I said, 'I've been visiting Tim Schmidt and his hemp crop.' This sawmiller laughed and said, 'Tim's not very popular around here, Peter,' and I said, 'Why?' He said, 'All the local pot growers don't like him because his industrial hemp is ruining their pot crops.' So the idea that somehow this amazing product, which we've used for more than 10,000 years, needs to be restricted in terms of its access because someone might grow a pot crop nearby is ludicrous. But it's typical of the attitude that we've seen that has restricted the growth of this amazing industry that has so much potential.

I want to talk about the Australian market for medicinal cannabis. We're seeing a lot of private equity interest in companies that are going through the process to register—obviously working out the cultivation side of that, which is the primary production side, through to licensing and permits and, of course, the supply chain. The market is estimated at $171.7 million in Australia at the moment and has been forecast to grow at 42 per cent per annum. Of course, there's a reason for that. It's because there's a very strong demand for this product. There are people out there who need it. They know that it works, they want to get off opiates and they want to try alternatives.

While the TGA has recently changed CBD products in terms of its scheduling, once again, unlike other countries that list CBD products as food products so they're available for the medicinal market, Australia is going through a very restrictive process for any company that wants to register a CBD product to be available over the counter at your local pharmacy. It's going to be very difficult for them to do that and they're going to have to do it at such a low level of efficacy that it's going to be hard to prove that it has any effect. Believe it or not, the target is mostly grumpy, middle-aged white men like me who want to sleep better at night-time. That is the international market for CBD. Tim Schmidt, who is a very well-respected farmer—he's a beef farmer and he farms a lot of crops—said to the audience in Launceston that CBD is not a dangerous product in any way, shape or form. Once you take the THC out of it, it has a lot of really good benefits. It was interesting also to hear Senator Roberts talking about that today.

This is a debate that's really important for Australians who need access to this product, and I think it's an enormous opportunity for innovation, research and development with the thousands of applications for cannabinoid products that we haven't really begun to understand yet. Of course, it's really important in a state like mine, Tasmania, where we can't necessarily complete on the world stage in commodity products like intensive cropping. It has even been difficult with vegetables in my home state, because we're a small island on the bottom of the world. High-value crops that can be grown in smaller plots, on smaller acreage, are the future for my state. It's where we've been able to leverage our reputation over the years. This is an enormous opportunity. I think a lot of people in this place would like to see this kind of Reefer Madness attitude change and us give suffering Australians what they need.